Ventures in Self Publishing

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If you’ve been a regular follower of my Friday Ramblings you know that this year I wrote a cookbook and have just self-published it. I won’t say it was easy work but it’s satisfying knowing that you have total control over your book, and yes you take both the accolades and blame if something’s not right with it. I know lots of you are interested in taking the self-pub route, but like me, have a limited budget, so thought I share the breakdown of who did what and costs for this venture-

They say a cover sells a book and because I have near zero design skills, knew I needed help. Lots of folks recommended I check out Fiverr.
I found a fantastic designer named Alex who I noted had designed cookbook covers.
Total cost was $31.50 and that included Alex purchasing a stock photo for me to keep for future use and him creating everything I’ll need when I publish the book in print form through Createspace.

Next step, something else that I have limited skills in, and that’s converting the book to both mobi and e-pub. Knowing I’d found the perfect designer on Fiverr, I went there searching for someone to help me out with the conversion. I found Jean who is great to work with and did a wonderful job for me. Total cost $47.50 which included a clickable table of contents and making sure everything worked properly.

Finally there’s getting the book to the sites. I have done a little of this myself but it’s time consuming, sometimes things go wrong and have to be relisted and all that takes away from time I could be writing so I used eBookPartnership. Cost was $50 and that included the ISBN. Best thing is they don’t charge a commission so what profit you make on each sale is 100% the author’s. http://www.ebookpartnership.com

Next up is the print version and I hope to get that set up in the New Year and I’m anticipating about another $20 for that but for now the total outside cost of the this venture was $128.75.
And for a little shameless self-promoting here’s the link to the book on Amazon-